Gnarls Barkley Talks New Album, Barely

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


mojo-photo-gnarls2.JPG

Danger Mouse (aka Brian Burton) gave an interview to Billboard recently to discuss the upcoming sophomore effort from Gnarls Barkley, but didn’t say, or offer, very much. He apparently went back on a promise to play multiple songs from the new album, instead offering to play only one, from his personal iPod, and don’t look at it or ask any questions:

“I can play the song now or after the interview,” he says. “I’m not going to talk about the song, so it doesn’t matter when I play it. And I can’t tell you the name of the song, either.”

Urp. He also refuses to give a name or possible release date for the new album (the follow-up to last year’s surprise hit, the 1.3-million-selling St. Elsewhere). Idolator muses that perhaps he’s “cracking a little under the pressure,” but this kind of secrecy worked for “Crazy:” mp3s of the track began circulating in late 2005 without a title attached, an acapella of Cee-Lo’s vocal was never released or distributed (despite voracious demand from bootleggers eager to pull a Grey Album on Danger Mouse), and it took months for bloggers to track down the original sample. While “Crazy” was a once-in-a-lifetime slice of brilliance, perhaps Burton’s tactic of resisting the internet age’s mantra of “everything you wanted to know (and even things you didn’t want to know) all the time” is an astute strategy for hit-making. We’ll see whenever the new album comes out.

WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

payment methods

WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate